But she wanted more from him, and she would need all her wits to get it.
Ivan was well aware of Lucy's quiet departure up the stairs, and he wanted desperately to toss his lingering guests out the front door. Instead, he suffered their lengthy good byes with barely repressed impatience:
Giles stood in conversation with the recently widowed Lady Rowe. As his friend handed her up into her carriage Ivan would have wagered a hundred pounds they planned to meet again, probably within the hour.
Alex had set his sights on younger game this night. He'd been in rare form, charming every unmarried young lady in sight. Now Sir Henry Smythe had an arm around Alex's shoulder. Smythe was newly come to his title, but he had pots of money—and a mousy little daughter that Alex had danced with several times. If she'd decided she wanted Alex, her father would no doubt try to buy him for her. Whether or not Alex would sell himself to such a dull creature was another matter altogether.
At the moment, however, Ivan didn't give a damn. He clapped Alex on the back. "Glad you could come. You too, Smythe." He gave Alex a not-so-subtle nudge toward the door.
Alex grinned, then looked around him in mock surprise. "'Dear me. Are we the last to leave? And where is your lovely wife, Thornton?"
Smythe, who'd drunk far more than he could hold, guffawed, then belched. "She's ... She's pro'bly naked in bed awaitin' his pleasure. You know, milord, that wife of yours has got an abs'lutely magnificent pair of—Ow!"
"Oh, dear. Excuse me, Sir Henry," Alex said, shoving the man toward the door. "I believe your lovely daughter is calling for you."
Ivan slammed the door so hard the sidelights rattled. It was either that or smash the man's nose in. The old goat! He had no business looking at Lucy's breasts—even if they were magnificent. Ivan had hardly been able to keep his eyes off them himself. Was it his imagination or was she even more voluptuous than she'd been before?
No, it was only that he was randy as hell. He had been for weeks. Their earlier escapade in the ballroom had taken a slight edge off it. But it had also whetted his appetite for more.
He locked the door and, with a slight nod to Simms, turned for the stairs. He stopped when he found Valerie and Sir James standing there arm in arm, staring at him. He was not amused.
"I sincerely hope you don't mean to deny me access to my own wife, and in my own home."
"You haven't treated her as if she is your wife," Sir James stated.
Ivan strode across the foyer. "Step aside," he ordered, glaring at Mawbey. When the man swallowed hard but did not budge, Ivan stifled a curse. He didn't want to fight the man, but if that's what it took ...
Valerie placed herself between them. "Ivan. Please. We don't want to interfere—"
"Then don't."
"You don't realize how unhappy she has been!"
Ivan gritted his teeth. "Actually, I believe I do. I plan to make it up to her tonight."
She took one of his hands in hers. "You were gone nearly two months. That's not something that can be made up for in only one night."
Nearly two months. It had felt like two years to him. How much longer had it seemed to Lucy? Ivan took a slow breath then released it. He stared down at Valerie's earnest face. "When did you become so wise?"
She smiled, the guileless smile of a child, the knowing smile of a woman. "Falling in love opens your eyes."
"Falling in love," Ivan repeated.
"I caution you not to confuse love with lust," Sir James put in. "While the two may happily coexist, they are not at all the same thing."
The muscle in Ivan's jaw began to tic. "I assure you, that's not a matter I've ever been confused about. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Valerie looked hopeful; Mawbey less so. They let him pass without incident, though, and that was all that mattered to Ivan. He made his way up the stairs, no less eager than before. But where he'd been sure of his goals, now he felt a niggling unease. A confusion.
He and Lucy were married, and despite their differences, his rights as her husband were clear. In return she had the right to entertain as she had tonight, to play the role of countess, and to spend the very generous allowance he meant to settle on her. Happiness, whether his or hers, did not enter into it.
She'd had her fun this evening. Now he meant to have his.
She was waiting in the master bedroom. But she was not in the bed. She sat curled up in a heavy upholstered chair in the corner, still wearing her shimmering blue gown. Her shoes and stockings lay abandoned on the rug beside the chair. Although she'd removed a handful of hairpins, her glorious hair was still confined in a coil that lay heavy across her shoulder.
When she met his gaze she was not smiling.
Ivan shrugged out of his coat. "Do you need help with your gown?"
She shook her head. He removed his cummerbund.
"I see you've made yourself comfortable in the master bedroom. Where are my things?" he added when he no ticed his toiletries were missing from beside the wash bowl.
"In the attic."
Ivan paused in the act of removing his pleated shirtfront. "The attic. An act of retaliation, I take it?"
"So you admit I have cause for retaliation?"
He resumed his methodical disrobing. "It doesn't really matter. What's past is past."
"Is it?"
Ivan stared at her. He'd caught her off guard earlier today and she'd reacted to him instinctively. She'd been angry, but he'd made short shrift of that anger. Now, though, she'd had time to think—and time to restoke her anger. There was no disguising the fact that once more she was furious with him.
He'd just have to catch her off guard again, he decided. She thought she was going to control this confrontation, but she was wrong.
He tossed the studs onto a side table then, without responding to her challenging words, strode up to her. He leaned down, bracing a hand on each arm of the chair and trapping her in it.
"If you need to rage at me, then go ahead and do so. It won't change the fact that you want me. Or that I want you."
Something flashed in her eyes. Something that could have been pain—-but was more likely fury, he told himself.
"You have no idea what I want." She spoke softly, without inflection.
"You think so?" Still holding her gaze captive, he moved his fingers up her arm, sliding over the silky fabric until he reached her shoulder and the place where the wispy cloth ended and her creamy flesh began. Then, even slower, he began to trace the deep neckline of her gown, down to where it revealed her breasts to an almost scandalous degree.
Every portion of his body responded to the feel of her— to the warm scent of her. To the very proximity of her. But he forced himself to concentrate on her reaction, not his. He forced himself to rouse her and repress his own growing excitement. She had to learn that he would be lord and master of his wife, not the other way around.
"I think you want this," he murmured, watching her eyes darken with pleasure until only a green rim showed around their luminous black centers. "I think you want my lips to run along here," he whispered as his fingertip slid just above her nipple.
"I think you want my tongue here." This time he let his finger slide over one peaked nipple, caressing it through the sleek fabric.
She was fighting not to respond. That was clear. But her sharp gasp at his erotic caress, and her breathy exhalation when he ended it, told him she was failing.
"If I'm wrong about what you want, Lucy, why don't you tell me what it is you do want."
She was breathing hard, and her eyes were bright, as if with a sheen of tears. But she didn't cry and Ivan pushed back any hint of alarm. She was excited, that was all. And that was all he wanted her to be. She needed this from him. It was the one thing he could give her that she really wanted. It was the one thing that would bind her to him forever.
Or for as long as he wanted to bind her to him, he told himself.
He moved his finger over her sweet, quivering flesh and heard the satisfying intake
of her breath again. Then, to his surprise, she took his face between her hands, holding him still before her. Their faces were but inches apart. Then-eyes remained locked together. But there was an intimacy between them now, a clarity of vision that made his heart hammer from more than just physical arousal.
He wanted to look away but she wouldn't let him. "I want you to make love to me, Ivan. That's what I want, for you to make love to me."
It was easy to do. It was nearly impossible.
Make love to me.
Ivan knew she meant more than touching her. Caressing her. Filling her body with his own. Those things he could do—he needed to do. Those things he must do or die if he did not.
But it was the other love, the emotional need she wanted him to fill, that came close to deflating him.
There was only one way to break the excruciating connection of their eyes. With a half-curse, half-groan, Ivan kissed her.
It was like being sucked into a whirlpool, a dizzy, terrifying spiral, dark with emotion and rife with danger. But he was a man inured to danger, impervious to fear. At least that's what he told himself as he sank into the warm welcome of Lucy's arms. She could not hurt him, only provide him with the pleasures of the flesh. She was only a woman, albeit one he liked better than any other. But she was no more to be trusted than the rest of them, and no more to be re lied on. If he needed her, it was only for this, this ability she had to rouse his body and excite his mind. If she thought this was love, she was wrong. And if she thought she could touch his emotions and make him believe love even existed, she was worse than wrong. She was a fool.
But what a delicious little fool. A sweet fool. A ferocious, hungry, passionate fool...
They never made it to the bed. She sat in the chair, her bodice pulled down, her skirts raised up while he made up for leaving her unfulfilled earlier in the evening. He made her grip the decorative carving at the top of the chair back while he teased her breasts and tortured her nipples. He made her stay in the same position when he moved his attentions to the sweet place between her legs. She was wet and hot for him, and it took very little to push her over the edge.
When she cried out and gave herself over to the passion, he was hard as a rock, as aroused as he'd ever been in his life. He wanted to possess her and fill her up, to explode inside her and mark her as his. Only his.
But some perverse demon had him in its grip, and he needed more from her than merely that. As he knelt between her legs, watching the shuddering aftereffects of her climax, he wanted to make her admit that she belonged to him. He wanted her total capitulation. He wanted everything she had to give with nothing held back.
So he started it again, only this time using his fingers and hands. He wanted to watch it happen this time. He wanted to see her face, look into her eyes as she gave herself up to him.
He thumbed one perfectly formed breast, one rosy-crested nipple. Meanwhile he slid a finger inside her. Immediately she tightened around him. When he rubbed his thumb over the taut bud protected by her dark curls, she jerked in reaction.
"Look at me, Lucy."
She opened her eyes, eyes glazed still with the power of her climax, and met his gaze. She was his, Ivan knew, and his overengorged manhood actually hurt from the knowledge. Still, he forced himself to concentrate on her, on arous ing her further still. He stroked in and out of her and used her own dewiness to moisten the place his thumb still teased.
She was panting and flushed. Her bare breasts were rosy and her cheeks stained with color. Little cries of helpless pleasure accompanied her every breath. Her eyes began to close but he wouldn't allow it. "Look at me," he commanded, in a voice hoarse with desire. "Look at me, Lucy. You're mine now, aren't you? Mine."
When she nodded, he could barely suppress a cry of triumph. When she cried out, however, then erupted beneath his hand, never once turning away from his hot eyes—he could not hold back his emotions any longer. She was open to him, body, heart. Everything. And he meant to take everything she offered.
He loosened his breeches, releasing his demanding arousal, and with a groan, entered her. At once she seemed to melt around him. To conform to him. To meld herself to him.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
But for the blessed moments of their union, it didn't matter. Ivan didn't care. As he poured himself into her and collapsed onto her, he cared only that they were together. That he'd found her, that he'd married her.
That he'd never let her go.
* * *
Chapter Twenty
Lucy awoke to the feel of her husband's hand exploring her body. It was still night. Their room was completely dark. She had no memory of them coming to bed. Nor of undressing. But she was naked and so was he, and he was wide awake.
"I'm going to corrupt you," he murmured.
His husky voice sent a quiver of desire racing through her. He was curved around her and his hand roamed her body at will, touching her, exploring her. The soft skin behind her knee. The depression of her navel. The crease between her buttocks and her thighs. He kissed the nape of her neck, then moved his mouth down her spine.
When she shivered and started to turn to face him he said, "Don't move. I'll do everything."
Lucy sighed. Let him do everything? That would be easy. That would be heaven.
It was heaven, and more. But it turned out to be far from easy. For as he roused her with warm, damp kisses and ever bolder caresses, she found it impossible to simply lie there. She wanted to kiss him back. She needed to touch him too. But Ivan was adamant.
Only when he was in her and moving over her was she able to give back to him. She welcomed him into her arms and wrapped her legs around him as the full weight of his body crushed hers into the bed. Then he began to move, slowly at first, and it was so erotic, Lucy almost fainted. His chest and its coarse patch of hair rubbed against her sensitive breasts. The fine linen sheets slid against her back. She was helpless beneath him, and yet powerful too.
His breathing was hot and hard against her neck, his lips lost in her hair as he brought them nearer and nearer to that final, exploding madness he invoked in her.
"Ivan," she gasped, clutching the sheets as it began. "Ivan!"
"I'm here." The words were a steamy torture in her ear. "I'm here, love."
Love. Though melting in passion, Lucy heard that one word and her heart soared. Love.
"I love you," she whispered as the explosion began. "I love you, Ivan."
They erupted together. They exploded into one another and around one another. The fire sucked them in and it burned them up.
But in the scorching aftermath, as they collapsed into the sweaty, twisted bed linens, something even better was formed. Something better than them apart, Lucy imagined. It was them together. Together and in love.
Ivan was already awake when Lucy first stirred. He'd been lying there as the dawn began to fill the room with light, lying there as still as death. Petrified with fear.
She loved him.
He'd heard her breathy words, but he didn't believe them. She believed them, though, and that was a problem.
But why should it be? The truth was, he should be well pleased with her admission. After all, that's what he'd wanted, to own her, to possess her. But as for love ...
A woman's love was fleeting. His mother's had been. His grandmother's had never been love at all. He gritted his teeth. The fact that Lucy had professed her love meant nothing. Even if she had meant it—which she might have at the time—it didn't mean it would last.
Still, as angry as that knowledge made him, it wasn't what had his heart pounding and his palms damp with sweat. The reason for that was far, far worse. For he could no longer deny the truth, at least to himself. And the bitter truth was that he had fallen in love with her.
To even think it made sweat bead on his forehead. She moved, stretching her legs, arching like a cat. Her foot grazed his leg and his panic increased.
Then she stiffened and he knew she was
fully awake— and that she was uncomfortable to find him in the bed with her. Was she already regretting what she'd said to him in that moment of complete surrender?
They lay there quietly. He pretending to sleep, she obviously debating what to do. Finally, with carefully controlled movements, she began to edge away from him.
Ivan wanted her to go. He wasn't ready to face her just yet. But it galled him that she wanted to slip away from him. As she reached the edge of the bed and began to rise, he could restrain himself no longer. He caught her by the arm.
"Where are you going?"
The startled face she turned toward him was white as chalk. Her eyes were huge and frightened. Frightened. But of what? "I... I... I'll be right back. I need to visit the ... the water closet," she stammered.
She was lying. He could tell, and it devastated something deep inside of him. Last night she'd loved him. This morning she couldn't get away fast enough.
His eyes ran over her, over the naked perfection of her soft, white skin, her full breasts, and her glorious, disheveled hair. Desire reared its head once more, but ruthlessly he tamped it down.
"The water closet?"
"Yes. Please, Ivan. I must go. I have to."
His eyes narrowed. There was no color in her cheeks this morning. In fact, she was more than pale. Her face held a pallor that was closer to green.
"What's wrong?"
"Please. Let me go. Oh!" She gave a desperate yank and stumbled back when he released her. She ran for the door, but stopped when she realized she was completely naked. Wild-eyed, she stared about and Ivan felt the first inkling of alarm.
"Lucy? What's wrong?"
She didn't answer. Instead she lurched toward the commode, grabbed the porcelain bowl that sat there, and vomited violently into it.
Ivan shot off the bed, then stopped. What should he do? She was obviously sick and he had no experience with sickness save for that due to overimbibing. Had she drunk too much last night? He didn't think so. Was she ill?
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